In August last year, Dutch investment company Prosus signed an agreement to acquire Indian online payments gateway company BillDesk for a total of $4.7bn, and merge with its payments and fintech business PayU
CCI approves PayU’s $4.7bn acquisition of BillDesk. (Credit: rupixen.com on Unsplash)
Dutch payments service provider PayU has secured the Competition Commission of India (CCI) approval for its previously announced acquisition of BillDesk for a total of $4.7bn.
BillDesk is a Mumbai, India-based online payments gateway company that provides an online payment platform, which enables banking and merchant website transactions.
In August last year, Dutch investment company Prosus Ventures, which owns PayU, signed an agreement to acquire BillDesk for a total of $4.7bn
BillDesk was planned to be merged with its payments and fintech business PayU.
Prosus Ventures then said: “Together, PayU India and BillDesk will be able to meet the changing payments needs of digital consumers, merchants and Government enterprises in India and offer state-of-the-art technology to even more of the excluded sections of society.”
The transaction was delayed for almost one year, as the potential business combination raised several competition concerns in the payment gateway space.
In April this year, the Indian competition watchdog requested both parties for additional information and has now approved the transaction.
The agreement is said to be one of India’s largest, after Walmart’s 2018 acquisition of Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart, for a total of $16bn.
It marks PayU’s fourth fintech acquisition in India in the last five years, following CitrusPay, Paysense and Wibmo.
With the acquisition of BillDesk, Prosus Ventures is enabled to scale up its payments and fintech business in India and abroad.